A Million Second Chances
by midnightluck
Summary: A typical adventure in Reaper!Bones-land. McCoy saves Jim's sanity, Reaper saves Sam's life, and some nosy kids save the doctor's soul. Well, kind of, and certainly not in that order.


_All recognizable characters belong to their respective owners (Universal, Gene Roddenberry). Written for the contest on Reaper_lives._

* * *

><p>They came to the planet Paxotil, and it was McCoy's turn on the away team. Luckily, the natives were friendly and peaceful, and they just really wanted to show the visitors their village, and maybe throw a feast. Kirk was down with that, so they followed a gorgeous girl in skimpy clothing back to the town.<p>

They passed a group of kids playing with a red ball in the street. They were laughing and chasing each other and the ball, and McCoy smiled. Children were precious, he reminded himself. The next generation of themselves. He tucked the image away, ready to be used against things like-

A boy brushed past him to follow the ball, but shrieked and crumpled instead. "What's wrong?" he said instinctively going down on one knee. The kid flinched away from him.

"Careful," said Jim on his other side. "They're touch psychics, and the kids are untrained."

-like that massacre on that plant whose name he'd purposefully forgotten, where he'd gone through the rubble with a gun and a medpack, trying to save anyone in any way he could. And that group of children, with a blue ball and a torn teddy bear, and the one missing an arm, and the one clutching a dead baby, and the one who'd died under his hands.

"And no one told me?" he snarled. He'd caused a child pain.

He set his anger and rage aside, and pulled up every happy memory he could. There weren't many, so he added calm moments in the dark, and the fierce joy of saving a life, and wrapped them around his mind like a shield.

"Shh," he said, reaching out again, slowly. His hand touched the boy's arm, and he threw himself into the doctor's arms. "It's okay," he murmured, lifting the boy up and maintaining the memory-shield. "S'okay, it wasn't me, I saved them, they're fine, it's all right, you're fine, you're fine..."

His shirt was getting wet, but it couldn't bother him. He'd hurt a child, and he was going to fix it. He brought forth memories of relaxing with friends during breaks in emergencies, and the cat he'd once had, puring and happy, and of snowy days and warm blankets.

The kid hiccuped once, twice, and then apparently fell asleep on his shoulder. The boy was young, but not that young; he was heavy. A girl came up to him as well. "Is he okay, mister?" she asked, and tugged his sleeve to get his attention. She gasped, then sighed, and leaned into his legs, smiling happily.

Bones looked at the boy in his arms, the girl on his legs, and the approaching crowd of curious children. He sighed and said, "Go ahead; I'll catch you up later." They'd be safe enough here, he thought, but he was not going to turn around and see the amusement on everyone's faces.

Instead, he sat down, shifting the boy to his lap, and the children piled on. "What's that?" one girl asked, and he brought forward everything he could remember about his cat, from kitten to adult. They cooed and laughed at its antics, smiled at its content purring. He told them stories, then, without ever opening his mouth. He showed them Sam, and the time he'd tried to surprise her with flowers, but she ended up having to rescue him. He remembered the taste of their chocolate birthday cake, and the smile she'd had for him. He showed them the time Duke tripped on a branch in a forest, and fell into a puddle and got leeches stuck on his face. He showed them some of the Enterprise's adventures, and told them of its crew. They liked to hear about Kirk and his heroics, and Spock and his logic. They laughed at Chekov's and Scotty's accents.

Come dinner time, none of the children came home. The parents were panicking. Finally, one of the security people went to check on Doctor McCoy. He came back smiling and said, "I've found them; all of them. Sir, you're not going to believe this."

McCoy was still sitting where they'd left him. The boy was still on his lap, and his eyes were closed. They couldn't get to him through the crowd of children, though. Even a few young adults were sitting around McCoy, and they formed an odd sort of chain. Any who couldn't reach the doctor directly were touching or holding or laying on someone who could, until everyone was intertwined. McCoy didn't say anything, didn't even move, but there was a ripple of laughter from the kids. One said, "Uh-uh, no way!" and something must have happened, because the kids laughed and hooted some more.

Keelia, their guide, gently laid a hand in the nearest child's head. She smiled. "Your doctor, he is a good story-teller."

"Bones!" Kirk called across the crowd. His eyes didn't open, but he grimaced, and the crowd watching his memories, or whatever they were doing, laughed again. The boy scrambled off his lap, though, and he did manage to stand up. "That's not true," said one of the closest girls. "You can share our planet instead."

He chuckled and said, "Thanks, but it doesn't quite work that way." The kids were up and finding their respective parents. "Mommy, can we keep him?" one boy asked a woman near then. Jim was careful not to smile as McCoy approached.

"So," he said, "I hear you're a good storyteller."

He sighed. "They only know this life, and their parents, who only knew this life. It was like giving a television to an Amish child. Now can we eat?"

"Of course," Jim said placatingly. Bones was not convinced.

During dinner, which was a group affair, children kept streaming up to him. "Show us the kitten?" They asked. "Show us the snow? Show us Sam?" And he did, every time.

A small group, maybe four or five of the younger kids approached after the meal. "Can we sleep with you?" the little girl in front asked. "We want to watch your dreams. Mommy said it was okay."

McCoy smiled tightly. "No, honey, I'm afraid that's not a good idea."

"Please?" asked another, with the biggest, bluest eyes the away team had ever seen.

"No. I've got scary stories in my head too, you see."

There was a quick conference; apparently, they hadn't considered that he would deny them this. Not after all he'd given earlier.

"It's okay, we're not scared!" claimed the girl with the eyes.

He shook his head and said, "It's really better if you don't. But I tell you what: if you're good tonight, I'll tell you about the tribbles tomorrow." He touched her cheek and sent a flash of a furball, and she smiled.

"Okay!" they agreed, and he sent them off.

"You're not really going to tell them about the tribbles?" Kirk asked, trying desperately to keep a straight face.

"Yeah. An edited version, of course, but the basic story? They'll eat it up."

"But..."

"You want me to tell them about Argo instead?"

Kirk scowled. "You promised not to speak of that again!"

"But I wouldn't be speaking of it," McCoy concluded smugly. "I'd just be...remembering."

Two of the older boys approached, but turned to Jim instead. "Can you show us about the Klingon ship?" they asked. Jim glanced over at Bones, who shrugged.

The taller boy explained. "He showed it from his point of view, but he wasn't on the bridge."

"Sure," Jim said, and then tried to.

After a minute or two, they pulled away. "Your images are messy," one of the boys informed him.

"Your mind isn't organized," the other concluded.

They left, and he stared after them, unable to quite believe it.

McCoy almost fell over laughing.

"Shut up, you," Jim scolded. "What did I do wrong?"

"I don't know, Jim. I'm not a touch psychic. I don't know what I did, much less what you did wrong."

Jim scowled at the table. It didn't help that a few minutes later, a girl crawled into McCoy's lap, and said, "Show me flowers?" He smiled, and she sighed and closed her eyes. "What are those?" She asked his shirt.

"Roses," he told her hair.

"Sam's favorite?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, Sam's favorite."

She sat up and threw her little arms around his neck, squeezed tight, and then slid off.

"Sam?" Jim asked.

McCoy didn't look at him. "Just...this girl I used to know."

Doctor Leonard McCoy had no siblings.

* * *

><p>He was glad he'd turned down the kids' request to watch his dreams. Running through the halls of the lab, looking for Sam, and everywhere, the kids themselves, broken and bloody and shot and dying and dead. He'd reacted on instinct and fired at motion, and had taken down the young girl with the blue eyes and her brother himself.<p>

He didn't scream, but his mouth tasted of blood when he woke.

* * *

><p>He did show them the tribbles, and a few other memories. Then Jim called for him and he'd said, "I have to go."<p>

"Are you going home to Sam?" the girl on his lap asked. Because they were still in story-telling position, all the children felt the sharp stab of grief, and the image he couldn't suppress:

_Sam! _

_John!_

_Sam! No, they can't take you no I'll find you I'll find you Just hold on I'll_

_I'll wait_

_SAM!_

The girl in his lap hugged him tight, and he tried to smile for them. The group pulled up _happy_ and sent it back to him.

"Thank you," he said sincerely, and blinked rapidly.

Some few were still crying when the beam took him away.

* * *

><p>Jim got himself into at least five serious scrapes in quick succession, and Bones made him sit down in Sickbay for a few hours and get everything patched up. It took longer than Bones would have liked, but everything was eventually as good as he could make it. Jim didn't even complain about the hypo, so he sent the captain to get some sleep, and added a sedative to the hypo to ensure it.<p>

A few hours later, large green orc-things invade the ship, but Jim wouldn't be waking up for two more hours, not given what Bones had dosed him with.

The doctor himself was in his office. He was definitely not napping or sleeping or anything, just...resting his eyes. His office door tore open, and he was on his feet and taking the first one down before he thought about it.

There were three more in Sickbay proper, and two were restraining Nurse Chapel while the third explained exactly what he was going to do to her, enjoying her fear. There were tears on her face, and she was young and blond and strong, and reminded him so much of Sam.

The three hit the deck hard, and they stay down. He dragged them to the door, and started a barricade.

He took down the few in hall, and had a nice little wall built when two security men finally round the corner. They were panting and bleeding, so he fixed them up before setting them to guard the door.

Sickbay was the only safe location, and the crew planned there, where Bones could patch people up in the meantime.

Jim finally woke up and suggested something stupid and impossible, and life went back to normal fairly quickly.

Chapel said thanks for saving her, and gave him one of her carefully hoarded bottles of alcohol. She didn't mention anything about how he'd done it, and he didn't either.

Life went on.

* * *

><p>He was sitting in the meeting room listening to Spock report on the status of the ship after that last debacle. He had a Sickbay full of hurt-but-not-dying crew, and, all in all, it could have gone worse.<p>

Spock was just finishing up when he was mentally blindsided by a chorus of voices screaming _SAM! i_n his head.

He fell out of his chair, hitting his head on the way down. "What?" he said out loud, staring at the table support and making no move to get back up.

_We found her!_ devolved into _she's here_ and _it's her it's sam_ and _come back, story-man_ and _she found you found her_. He lost track and the chorus slipped and faded from his head.

"How far are we from Paxotil?" he asked from under the table, into the silence.

Jim leaned down to look at him, and Spock said, "Approximately two point seven days."

"Why? What's on Paxotil?" Jim asked.

McCoy took a second to try to rephrase, but still ended up saying, "The children are calling." He got back up on unsteady legs and sat in the chair again, rubbing absently at his temple.

"I thought they were touch psychics." Jim said. "How could they reach you?"

"Damned if I know," he said, and his head really hurt.

"If a large concentration focused on the same message, it is possible it could be broadcast. For such a distance, they would likely need a focus, some sort of preexisting psychic link," Spock postulated.

"Sounded like every kid in the damn village," McCoy grumped. "Ow."

Jim is frowning. "What did they say?"

He swallowed. "They said...they said to come back. That they'd found something."

"Did you leave them any item they could use as a focus?" Spock asked, still picking at the problem.

"Something?" Jim asked, used to ignoring Spock by now.

"Er," he said, and he really didn't want to bring this up now, but for Sam, he knew he'd do anything. Because if she was still alive, if she'd made it to Paxotil, it meant she'd survived and gotten away. Watching friends die was bad enough for him, and he wouldn't let her go through eternity alone, not if he could help it.

"'Er'?" Jim repeated, a gleam in his eye. "What is 'Er'? What have they found, Bones?"

He sighed. "My twin sister."

Jim's mouth dropped a bit, and he wasn't the only one. There was surprise on everyone's face, except Spock.

"Yes," Spock thought out loud. "A twin would be exactly the sort of channel a touch psychic could use."

_JOHN_ resounded through his head in Sam's voice, and he fell off his chair again. "Stop it!" he said, though he was pretty sure it wouldn't help.

"All right, all right," Jim sighed. "Lay in a course for Paxotil. Bones, stop lying around, you've got injured people to see to. Go ahead; the rest of you, let's finish up this report."

* * *

><p>He expected Jim a while ago, but something must have happened, because Jim didn't come down to bug him for three whole hours.<p>

"So," Jim said, lounging in Bones's chair. "you've got a twin sister."

He sighed. He'd made this obvious, but Jim was going to pester him about it for ages. "Yes, I said as much."

"Is she hot?" God, Jim was as bad as Duke. "Damn, I bet you're an overprotective big brother, aren't you?"

He couldn't help but snort. "And what makes you think I'm older?"

Jim's eyes got wide again. "You have an older sister? No way, you're such a big brother kind of guy. Still, anyone who could put up with you growing up is bound to be amazing."

"You know what?" Bones said. "I'm not even going to warn you off her. She'll eat you alive, and I'll be there with popcorn."

"Dunno about that. I've been dealing with you for years. She can't be worse than you." Jim stretched and looked supremely confident in himself.

Bones barked a laugh and said, "Yeah, you think that."

It didn't matter, really. After roughly two hundred years of searching and grieving, he was finally going to see Sam again. Soon.

Nothing Jim could say could bring him down.

* * *

><p>They beamed down, Jim and Spock flanking him, for once. They materialized on the outskirts of the village, and a familiar face at waist height screamed, "He's here!" Kids came rushing out of nowhere, any old enough to walk, some as old as Chekov. They formed a crowd, an honor guard around them, leading them towards the niche McCoy had once spent hours in.<p>

She was exactly as he remembered her, and her hair gleamed gold in the sunlight. She was holding the hand of a girl-child, who tugged her towards them. Sam was too focused on the kid, who claimed to have a "surprise! You'll never guess!" to notice them, him, at first.

"See?" the girl said proudly. "Isn't he a great surprise?"

She did look up then, catching his eyes across the distance. "John," she whispered, and suddenly, he was across the plaza and lifting her up, crushing her in a hug.

She laughed and hugged back, kissing his cheek and saying, "You did find me. I was starting to get worried."

"I never stopped looking," he told her. "Never. I missed you."

The kids crowded close, laughing and talking over each other, grabbing hands, and passing along _joy_. He never wanted to let go, never wanted to stop breathing her in, and knowing that he hadn't lost her. She clung to him the same way, but then had to ask, "Who are they?"

He pulled away, but left his arm around her waist. "Sam, this is Captain James Kirk of the _U.S.S. Enterprise_, and his First Officer, Commander Spock. Jim's worse than Duke, even; ignore him. And this is my sister, Samantha."

"Howdy-do, miss," Jim drawled, and she just gave him a look and an eyebrow.

"The resemblance is uncanny," Spock said, and his own eyebrow twitched in a Vulcan smile.

"That's a complement," he told Sam in a whisper designed to be heard by all.

"Well," she said, "in that case, it's a pleasure to meet you. I trust you've been taking care of my brother, here?"

Jim laughed. "Nah, he's been taking care of us. He's our Chief Medical Officer."

She drew away from John to look him in the eye. "You're a doctor," she stated in disbelief. He looked at the ground. "You're a doctor _in space_."

He met her eyes, and she heard what he didn't say: _for you. I did it for you, to find you, all for you, always for you._

And she understood, because, after all, she'd taken C-24 for him, and she'd gone to space to look for him too. Across the years she'd traveled and searched, knowing he was alive, which was more than he'd known about her.

"John," she started, laying a hand on his cheek.

He interrupted her with a gruff, "Oh, don't you dare," and with a sudden move, slung her over his shoulder.

"Hey!" she shrieked with laughter, slapping his back with her fists. "Put me down!"

"Nope," he said simply, but happily. "Thanks, guys," he directed to the kids. "Thank you for telling me."

"You've waited long enough," said an older boy.

"This is our thank you for the stories," added someone else.

Sam propped her elbows up on his back to blow them kisses, and he nodded at Jim.

Jim, smiling, tapped his badge and said, "Kirk to _Enterprise_. Four to beam up."

* * *

><p>Scotty had just a second to wonder about the oddly-shaped silhouette taking shape on his pad before it resolved into Doctor McCoy with a gorgeous woman over his shoulder.<p>

"You gonna put me down now?" she asked, clearly amused.

The doctor swung her around in a complicated movement that ended with her being held bridal style. They both frowned for a moment, and looked eerily similar. Then he carefully set her back on her feet, and took her hand to (unnecessarily) help her down from the transporter pad.

"Wow," Scotty said. "Welcome aboard, miss."

She beamed at him. "Thank you. She seems to be a fine ship."

"Oh, she is," Scotty assured her. "Best of the fleet, she is. I'd be happy to give you a tour at some point."

"This is Scotty, Chief Engineer," McCoy said, still in her personal space. "Scotty, this is Samantha, my sister."

* * *

><p>They got her quarters, and then went on a tour of the living areas. She was introduced around, and picked up a communicator tag somewhere. Spock peeled of to go inspect something or other, and the other three headed to the cafeteria to get coffee.<p>

Bones explained a bit about their history, and Sam told funny stories about a young Leonard, though she called him John.

He decided to ask about this. He got as far as, "So, Bones," before Sam interrupted him.

"They call you Bones?" she asked incredulously.

"Er," said Bones.

Sam laughed, and laughed, and Bones never did find out what Jim was going to say. Jim got distracted, and the matter was forgotten for the moment.

* * *

><p>Sam had been living happily on the <em>Enterprise<em> for almost a week. She had spent a lot of time in Sickbay with her brother, and they were understandably a bit clingy.

It was nice having her around; she had a very positive affect on the doctor. Still, her presence would eventually have to be justified to the higher-ups. He called a meeting to discuss her future.

"So, Samantha—may I call you Samantha?" At her nod, he continued. "What skills do you have? How may we employ you?"

"I can stay?" she asked, surprised.

"Jim knows that if he kicks you off, I'd go with you," John said.

"That, and he would threaten me with hypos for weeks. It's a bad idea to piss off your doctor, especially when he's grumpy and vengeful. So, previous professions?"

"Oh, I was a forensic archaeologist. I'm also a doctor, and a genetic engineer," she listed off.

"Have you found..." Bones started.

"No," she said, "but no one else has either."

He slumped a bit in his seat.

"Wow," Jim said, ignoring everything he didn't want to hear. "We'd hire you anyways. Are you already part of Starfleet?"

"No," she answered, "but I'm not adverse to joining."

* * *

><p>It's not necessarily that he's mellowed, it's just that having Sam around makes things easier. She can always make him smile, and she has no compunction about slapping him out of a bad mood.<p>

She remembers Olduvai.

It's not that he's changed, he's just...more himself. The nurses make their approval of her known, and Jim can't get rid of her now, even if he wanted to.

Jim doesn't, even if she did "eat him alive," as Bones put it. He'd laughed at Jim the whole time he was fixing him up.

"I did warn you."

Jim winces. "She didn't have to break my hand!"

Sam strolls in and hops up onto an unoccupied bed. "Yes, I did. I really, really did."

"I told you," Bone repeats gleefully, "Sam can take care of herself."

"And anytime I get in over my head, you come and kick serious ass for me."

"It happened once!"

"Twice."

"Okay, twice. It's my prerogative as a brother."

Jim's smiling as he joins in. "And now you've got the whole _Enterprise_ to back you up, too. I'd never hear the end of it if you got yourself in trouble."

Bones is smiling, but it's not a very nice smile. "Oh, yes, you would. I would _be _the end of it."

"Oh, stop it, both of you. I can handle myself perfectly fine," Sam says, flapping a hand her two boys.

"Izzat so, Sammy?" Bones says, ruffling her hair as he passes.

"I seem to remember rescuing _you _at least once!"

"I was _five_!"

"So was I!"

Jim loves that he's found someone who can out-argue Bones, someone who can make the good doctor _blush_. It's positively delightful.

He's waiting on the medical equipment to finish rebuilding his bone and watching the siblings snipe at each other when something reoccurs to him.

"Why do you call him John?" he asks Samantha. He got interrupted before, and he's still curious.

"That was my name," Bones says, messing with a tray across the room. "Then some stuff happened and some people wanted us dead. We moved, changed our names, and ended up getting separated." He glances at Sam and smiles. He's been smiling a lot, recently. "I've been looking for her ever since."

"And I was looking for him. Shoulda known you'd go to Starfleet," she says. "Once a soldier, always a soldier."

"Semper fi," he shoots back.

"Oh, yeah, 'cause that worked out _so _well for you."

"Oh, shut up, you," he says, but there's a smile lurking in the corner of his mouth. "You weren't complaining then."

"Yes, I was; remember?"

"You were a _marine_?" Jim asks incredulously. "You almost failed Basic Self Defense!"

"You did _what?_" Sam demands.

"You also almost failed _marksmanship!_"

"_John?_" Sam says in a voice that promised retribution if answers were not forthcoming.

"They were phasers! I hate phasers!" Bones is looking a bit desperate.

"Then you'd better have at least one proper gun around here somewhere!" she threatens.

"I do! I do!" His hands are up in surrender and he's backing away from her glare.

"You've got a _gun_ on board and I didn't _know_?" Jim demands, crossing his arms.

"Well..." Bones starts.

"It had better be a _proper_ gun," Sam continues.

"How could you get a gun past security anyways?"

"And enough extra ammunition!"

"Anything else I should know about? Knives, grenades, warheads?"

"Yes, have you got any blades? I need a new knife for in-fighting."

"Okay, stop it! Both of you! Yes, I've got blades; come by my room later. Jim, it's easy to sneak disassembled guns past security along with all the _high-tech medical equipment _with all the _parts_ and _fiddly bits_. No one else added anything; I checked. It only worked because no one expects a doctor to try anything like that. Security is not compromised."

There is silence in the infirmary. Then Sam snorts. "'Fiddly bits.' Is that technical doctor jargon?"

"Yes," he says with a straight face. "Yes, it is."

"'Thingamabob' is a technical term, according to Scotty," Jim puts in. "It's the part between the 'Thingie' and 'That One Place'."

Sam laughs, and he lets a smile come through, but only a little.

"A marine, though," Jim says. "Really, a marine? I would never have guessed."

"I was the closest our team had to a medic," Bones says, and checks the progress of the osteoregenerator. He messes with it, and it makes a _beep!_ Bones takes it away.

Jim shakes his hand, and pokes at it a bit. "A marine," he marvels. "How did you used to be a marine and still come that close to failing Basic Self Defense?"

"By doing my job. We're in hiding, remember?" Bones is back with a pokey-thing Jim doesn't know the name of, but dreads. "If you know and still can't understand it, then how would anyone else ever guess?"

"You _tried_ to fail," Jim accuses. "You did it on purpose."

"Were you even listening? Of course I did!" Bones pokes extra-hard, and Jim flinches.

"Well," he says, staring at the red marks on his hand, "at least I don't have to worry about you on away missions any more."

Sam cracks up, and refuses to explain why.

* * *

><p>Sam does get a new blade. She also goes over his private armory, and makes a list of things to update and add. She gets why he doesn't like phasers; she doesn't either. Not that she does like guns, it's just that there is no weight to a phaser.<p>

It's hard to adapt to that when you started with a three-plus pound gun.

She lets John run her through knife-fighting drills, though. The galaxy is a dangerous place, after all.

Life falls into a new routine for the ship's doctor. He loves that he has his family and friends all in one place, where he can make sure everyone is safe. For this reason, he almost protests when Samantha is assigned her first away mission.

He doesn't actually ever say anything, though. Sam can still dish out a verbal beat down, and in their time apart, she has picked up some...colorful vocabulary.

They reach a compromise without ever talking about it. She puts up with his fussing, and he doesn't try to stop her. He always worries when she's gone, though.

He lost her once already. He doesn't think he could bear to lose her again.

She's down on the surface of some green planet, and, last he heard, having a grand old time at it. She's been doing this for months, now, and he's gotten used to it, kind of. He's still absently listing the things that could go wrong in the back of his head, though, when Jim walks into Sickbay.

"You _look_ fine," he says, squinting at his captain.

"Um," Jim says, and it's so unlike him that Bones immediately drops the folders he was looking at to give Jim his full attention.

"'Um', what?" he asks, more or less calmly.

"We, uh. We haven't heard from the away team. They...missed their check in." Jim refuses to meet his eyes.

There's a slow anger burning in the pit of his stomach. "Right," he says, and leads the way to the bridge. By the time they get there, a terrorist group is on-screen demanding the _Enterprise_ as ransom. They want control of the ship, and thus Federation access codes or something, he's not listening. He meets Sam's eyes through the screen.

She smiles at him, and then they punch her in the stomach. One holds a knife to her face, and says, "You have two hours to give us an answer. Or else." And he slices her cheek a little.

They cut communication, and the crew do a little research. This is the head honcho of a multi-planet anarchist group, determined to bring down the Federation. They're all wanted criminals, and no one quite knows where the higher-ups have their base, though some of the pictures match the guys they've been talking to.

Jim engages standard response; he sends a security team. It's a full compliment, but the terrorists were expecting it. They're not an intergalactic mob for nothing.

The team beams into an ambush, takes heavy damage, and beams right back out again.

A second team, including uninjured members of the first, beams to a separate location, but they can't get past the barricade.

Bones is gripping the back of Jim's chair so hard his knuckles are white and the chair is creaking. When the second team suffers casualties and is forced to retreat, he swears under his breath.

They are hailed again.

"Nice try," says the leader, and Bones takes a second to memorize the guy's face. He also notes the guy to his left, the one who'd cut Sam. The leader is still talking. "Unfortunately, because of your silly choices, we're gonna hafta make an example." The Cut guy pulls Sam forward and pushes her onto her knees. "You got twenty minutes, or she dies, and another hostage every ten minutes after that," he says, and laughs.

The communication cuts, and he says, "Jim."

"Can you do it?" Jim asks.

He snarls, and Jim says, "Go."

He leaves the bridge and doesn't look back.

It doesn't take long to load up. He's kept his guns in good repair and his blades sharpened. He knows how to conceal, and by the time he walks out the door, black-on-black, he's carrying a lot more than he appears to be.

Jim meets him in the transporter room, because Scotty's in the engine room, trying to find a way to beam past their shields. Jim does a double take.

"She'll be all right," he says, but it's hollow.

"She will; I'm making sure of that." His accent is gone, but he doesn't really notice, and no one else does, either. "I told you I'd end it."

He gets on the pad, and swings his huge gun around. The biolock activates. _"RRTS Special Ops clearance verified. Handle ID: Reaper."_

The transport activates.

"Dammit!" Jim rages back on the ship. "You said marine! You said _marine_, not fucking Special Ops! Fuck!" He goes to punch a wall, but remembers just in time that the doctor isn't there to fix broken fingers anymore.

Instead, he goes back to the bridge.

It's a good thing he does, because he gets there just in time to hear Bones say, over the intercom, "...killcam active?"

"Confirmed," Spock says. "We have eyes."

"Good," Bones says, "'cause I'm cutting sound."

Jim stalks over to watch the video feed over Spock's shoulder. He doesn't order it on main-screen, and it's a good thing. The first few bodies, the innocent villagers, fall incapacitated, non-fatally wounded, or merely unconscious. The guys inside the complex aren't so lucky.

After a minute or so, Jim can't watch anymore. He turns away.

"Captain," Uhura says, "we're being hailed again."

"On-screen," he orders, and it's the idiots again.

"I don't know what your game is or what you're doing, but stop it!" He's crazy, eyes wide and wild. "Call them off! Stop it! We'll kill them! I'll kill her!"

"Sorry," Kirk says, meaning no such thing. "I've got no contact with him. Can't tell him a damn thing." He pauses, looks thoughtful. "Not sure I want to."

The man screams something incomprehensible, and takes two steps forward to aim the gun at Samantha's head.

She sweeps his feet out from under him. She hasn't got her hands or mouth free, but she gets her hands in front of her and takes his gun away.

He calls her a few names, and she can't free a hand to lower the gag enough to respond.

It doesn't matter; the guy is cut down by a hail of bullets off-screen. There's a few more seconds of strafing, and a few more screams, and then the clatter of a gun hitting the floor. McCoy, no, _Reaper_, slides into frame, and right back out the other side. Sam's ropes are cut from that direction, and she throws herself off-screen, and, unless Jim misses his guess, into her brother's arms.

There is murmuring too indistinct to make out, and then the siblings cross into frame. McCoy leans down to retrieve his giant gun, and really, Jim wonders, does it need to be quite that big? He shoulders his weapon, grins at the camera and says, "Clear."

Sam smacks him on the back of the head.

"Ow!" he complains.

"You both okay? No bullet holes?" Jim asks. There's blood on Sam's uniform, but he doesn't think it's hers. It's too hard to see blood on McCoy's black clothes, but he knows it's there.

You don't gun down fourty-odd people and not get blood on you.

"We're fine," Sam assures him, still clinging to her brother. He catches the safety, swings his gun across his back, and picks her up in a smooth movement.

"Stop manhandling me already!" she laughs, and he sticks out his tongue in the most immature display the doctor has ever been seen to indulge in. Sam just seems to bring out that side of him.

Jim gives the order to transport them, and the rest of the hostages (the only other life signs left in the place, god, Bones), back aboard. Bones is saying, "Hey, I just saved your life; I have manhandling rights!" as they disappear from the screen.

"Cut communication," Jim says. The main screen is replaced by the regular view of stars, and the planet below. He staggers to his feet.

"Captain?" Spock asks, also on his feet.

"Ready room," he says, and doesn't add, _throwing up_.

Spock can figure that bit out himself.

* * *

><p>"You said you were a marine," Jim accuses later. The siblings are eating dinner, but Jim can't bring himself to look at food right now, though he has a mug of coffee.<p>

"Yes," Bones says. "I was." He's clearly a bit confused as to where this all was going.

"You said _marine_, not Special fucking Ops," Jim clarifies. "Not RRTS, not Reaper, not that entire Mars fiasco. You said 'team medic', not highest fucking kill count on record."

Bones sighs. "I don't like killing. That doesn't mean I'm not good at it. I don't kill innocents, not if I can help it. I don't kill civilians, and I never, under any circumstances, kill kids."

"And Mars?" Jim throws at him. "Or was that a different Reaper than the one we learned about? It was the same team, because they discontinued RRTS Special Ops after that. Are you gonna tell me that wasn't you?"

"No," he sighs, "that was us."

"I was in danger up there, from a mutagen," Sam puts in. "He saved me. Well, and the earth, but mostly me."

"We were both infected," Bones continues. "We're strong, we're quick, and we apparently heal too fast to age properly. Also too fast to get properly drunk, which is no kind of fun."

The twins both stare at him, and he looks back blankly. "So you're, what, two hundred some-odd years old?"

Bones blows out a breath, "Yeah, something like that. I lost track of Sam about ten years after Olduvai. I've been looking for her since then."

Jim blinks. "Wow. You weren't kidding when you said you hadn't seen each other in forever, were you?"

"No," she says, and leans over to bump the doctor's shoulder.

"And you know what's really sad?" Jim asks. "Finding out my CMO is an immortal legendary killer is so not the strangest thing that's ever happened to me." He frowns into his mug. "It's not even the strangest thing this _year_." He ponders a moment, then announces, "I need a new, less interesting life."

"No you don't," Bones says with certainty. "Without the _Enterprise_ and all our fun, near-death adventures, you'd be bored within a week."

Jim sighs. "I don't think I'm going to talk to you anymore."

Sam snickers, and then asks how the two of them ever met, anyways.

Bones sits back and listens to his sister and his best friend sharing embarrassing stories of which he's the subject. He can't even find it himself to be mad.

This is how life is supposed to go, he thinks.

Of course, that's about when the alarm sounds, and the next emergency begins.

_End_


End file.
